The meat inside is often firmer and full of complex flavors.
#WHERE TO BUY OYSTER SPAT FREE#
The oysters pulled from those cages have deep cups and shiny shells free of the encrustation that cling to wild Gulf oysters scraped from reefs. Terry Shelley of Shelley Farms pilots a boat to his oyster farm near Port Sulphur. Bill Walton of Auburn University in Alabama conservatively estimates that in 2019 oyster farmers across the Gulf generated $5 million in revenue. This May, Texas approved the approach, and now oyster farming is legal in every state along the Gulf of Mexico. Although farming oysters in suspended cages has long been how things are done on the east and west coasts, the first Gulf farms started deep in the South, in Alabama, six years ago. This new business for Shelley has become a rapidly growing business in the South. Trailed by his three German shepherds, Shelley, his face weathered by years on the water and prone to mutter obscenities when government regulations are raised, explained how he takes oyster spat, baby oysters each smaller than a thumbnail, and raises them in 500 floating plastic cages lined up in neat rows. To Shelley, they look like a "military cemetery." Eight months later, the oysters are three inches long, ready to be shucked and slurped. So three years ago, Shelley got into a new business: growing oysters in cages. "I see everything decreasing, and I'm watching what's taking place," Shelley said. The American South is your destination for journalism that exposes the wrongs and celebrates what's right about the region. In recent years, however, those leases have produced fewer oysters. Near the state’s far northern edge, Shelley first pulled oysters from the shores that on a map dissolve like lace into the Gulf of Mexico’s waters.Įventually he secured nearly 70,000 acres of oyster leases, and he realized it was better business to send other people out in a half dozen boats to work his reefs. Then another boat hit its bow, and he moved into the oyster business. He used to shrimp and crab, spending weeks on the water in a 72-foot double-rigger named The Second Chance. Over his five decades in the Louisiana seafood business, he has too. Many oyster reefs and some oyster farms were devastated, and for a time restaurants in the area had few Gulf oysters to sell. Update: Since this story was published, the impacts on oyster harvests from the increased fresh water that Mid-West floods pushed into the Gulf of Mexico affected supply across the region.
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